Introduction
Document Type
Book chapter
Source Publication
Interrogating modernity : culture and colonialism in India
Publication Date
1-1-1993
First Page
1
Last Page
18
Publisher
Seagull Books
Abstract
In the imaginary of the ‘modern’ world, the words ‘culture’ and ‘India’ have somehow always been stitched together. This ligature, it could be argued, underwrites the very project of modernity itself. The mobilization of ‘Indian Culture’ was as crucial to the West’s construction of its identity in contrast to the Oriental Other as it was to the reconstructed Orient’s attempts to define itself. Culture has inevitably meant in our context the monuments of antiquity, the temple sculpture of a glorious past, the texts of ancient scriptures, all ‘the wonder that was’. So when we turn to look at present-day cultural practices, weighed down as we are by the golden past and therefore by a certain notion of culture, we react with incomprehension, dismissal, embarrassment or shame. Is it, perhaps, the very modernity of our culture that prompts this reaction?
Additional Information
ISBN of the source publication: 9788170461098
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Niranjana, T., Sudhir, P., & Dhareshwar, V. (1993). Introduction. In T. Niranjan, P. Sudhir, & V. Dhareshwar (Eds.), Interrogating modernity: Culture and colonialism in India (pp. 1-18). Calcutta: Seagull Books.